The question with one answer

Two estate agents in Al Ain show the same family the same kind of villa on the same afternoon, and both of them ask a lot of questions.

How many children? Do they walk to school? Does anyone work from home? Is the garden for playing or for sitting?

With the first agent, the answers do not seem to matter. Children who walk, then this street is perfect. Children who are driven, then the garage here is excellent. Every reply is caught and steered towards the villa he came to let. The questions are real words, but the destination was set before the car pulled up. They are there to warm the family up and keep things moving.

The second agent asks the same things and then does something unusual. She changes her mind. Told that the grandmother lives with them, she says this house is wrong, the bedrooms are all upstairs, and offers to show them one she had not planned to. Told they rarely use a garden, she stops talking about the garden. Now and then a family tells her something she did not know about the area, and she writes it down.

Both are asking questions. Only one of them is asking.

There is a simple test for which is which. If the person speaking already knows where the conversation must end, it is a pitch, however many question marks it carries. If the conversation could move them, if they are prepared to leave it thinking differently, it is a question.

That second kind is rarer than it looks, in a sitting room or anywhere else.

And people always notice. Usually without being able to say why, the family trusts one agent with the next call and lets the other go to voicemail.